A Beginning
by CatherineGrissom1
Summary: A story from Catherine's abusive past, and the new beginning that saved her life. WARNING - strong violence ... CG angst


A Beginning

Author: Emily  
Contact: R for violence

Category: C/G Angst

Summary: "No," she replied, her eyes closing. "It's just a beginning."

AN: This is pretty dark and pretty violent … I'm not sure where exactly it came from, but I hope you all like it.

When she felt him draw near, she backed away subconsciously, unsure of him. The cold desert air wound its way through her hair as she held the cigarette between her dry lips, her thumb nervously flicking the lighter, sparks lighting her eyes briefly. She muttered a curse, shaking the lighter, before he gently pushed her hand away and held his own lighter up, flicking once, brightening her face with a soft orange glow. He kept the lighter lit for longer than necessary, watching her hooded eyes darting from his face to the flame and back again, memorizing the way the fire burned shadows from her face.

"You okay?" he asked quietly, his soft voice contradicting the world weary look in his eyes.

She shrugged in response, not trusting herself to speak. She instead focused on the dark bruise forming across the knuckles of his right hand, the reddish purple harshness matching the bruises on her wrists. She knew that in a couple of days, the bruise would fade to a pale green, tinged with blue, the colour of the bruise under her eye that she had skillfully covered with makeup. A few days later, it would be a sickly yellow, and then it would disappear again. She often marveled at the way the body healed, hiding any evidence of the pain, masking the fear, avoiding the truth.

He knew she was high again. He always did. And she knew that he knew, even though she pretended she wasn't, pretended that he didn't notice. The cocaine burned through her system, the high already beginning to wear off. She wanted more, but knew she couldn't get it, not now, not anymore. The sounds of the city were muffled by the cold air, and when he exhaled, the vapour from his breath mixed with her cigarette smoke, rising towards the clouded sky, mingling, before dissipating.

Someone had once told her that the particles from Caesar's last breath had diffused around the entire world, and that everyone had breathed his breath. The scientist in her had analyzed the saying, but the dreamer in her often imagined that she was breathing in the life of the man standing with her. She often wondered whether he had ever considered it himself.

She had cursed him when she had opened her eyes to see him before her, cursed him for finding her. She swore through her tears, wanting so badly to hit him, to hurt him, but her wrist was sprained and her stomach ached from the impact of Eddie's foot. She wanted to curl into a ball and slowly rot away like the bodies she'd seen on the metal slab, systematically decomposing until all that was left of her was a pile of bones, not much more than she was now.

He had punched the wall with more force than she imagined he could posess, swearing Eddie to the depths of hell and back, softening when she whimpered at the noise. When he had tenderly taken her hand in his and examined her wrist, she'd flinched and tried to step away from his observant eyes. He noted the way she favoured her right let, the way she remained hunched over slightly. He'd lifted the hem of her bloodstained tank top, two fingers delicately gliding over bruised and broken flesh, causing her to gasp, a strangely satisfying pain achieved with the sudden intake of breath.

"Where is he?" he'd asked, his voice a deadly quiet. She merely pointed vaguely towards the door, not trusting herself to speak. He wanted her to talk, but she didn't know what to say.

Eventually, after he'd cleared the empty beer bottles, the broken glass from the 40 of vodka that was hurled at the wall and the vomit on the floor where she had lain in a heap while Eddie pummeled her, he led her to the couch, brushing the sweaty hair away from her face as she stared blankly ahead.

Words began to tumble from her mouth in a parade of truth, telling him how she had thought everything would get better once she'd started her job with CSI, how it had inspired her to change her life, to quit the coke, to become a mother. She told him how Eddie had started to yell at her again around the time Lindsey turned one, about how he started beating her again a few weeks later, how every time he hit her he accused her of fucking Grissom while he himself was off messing around with prostitutes, secretly fuelling his coke habit again.

She told him how Eddie had stumbled home drunk a week before, his nose red from the drugs, about how he had hit her so hard in the face she had fallen backwards against a wall, denting it with the back of her head. She told him that was why she stopped coming to work, trying so desperately to prove to Ed that she wasn't sleeping with her boss, trying so hard to stop him from escalating while their daughter slept in the room next door.

When she began sobbing again, he rubbed her back, wishing he could absorb her pain as she cried for the loss of everything that had been going so well. She stuttered out broken sentences, piecing the night together for him. Ed had been gone for two days. She had found his cocaine in a sock in the heating vent, where he used to hide it before Lindsey came along. She sent her sleeping daughter to spend the night at Nancy's, hiding her black eye from her sister as she handed her over.

She cut four lines on the glass coffee table after staring at the bag of white powder for almost an hour. She snorted them back, willing the pain away. Four more lines, then two, then another two, and she passed out on the floor. The running commentary in her head told her to hell with work, to hell with Ed, to hell with Gil, to hell with life, as the world darkened around her.

"In a way," she whispered to the man beside her, her body shaking as the drugs wore off, "I hoped you'd find me."

But instead, it had been Eddie who had forced the door open, Eddie who had seen her passed out on the floor, Eddie who hoisted her up by her wrists, shaking her back to consciousness before dropping her again to the floor, alcohol and lust and greed fuelling his muscles as he kicked and punched her form. She passed out, the pain fading, no tears shed as he pushed her legs open and had his way with her, grunting as he came, stumbling back out of the house to find another high or another girl.

Wishing that death would swallow her up, she curled into a ball, her stomach heaving as she passed out again. But instead of opening her eyes to heaven or hell or wherever she belonged, she found herself sitting against the wall as he stood over her, calling her name.

"And you did find me," she murmured, turning to look him in the eye for the first time.

"It's over now, Cath," Gil whispered, pulling her shivering form against him.

"No," she replied, her eyes closing. "It's just a beginning."

END


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